Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company Building

History and architecture

In the wake of the World's Colmnbian Exposition of 1893 which spawned the Academic Classical Movement throughout America, the neo-classical style virtually became a formula solution for bank design. Constructed in 1907, for the New York County National Bank, (formed 1855), this bank building is an exceptionally fine and well-conceived example of its type.

The overall design, although small in scale, employs the Ornamental classical type in a unified and structurally expressive manner, superimposing two classical architectural systems, a trabeated and an arcuated order. Enhancing the well-proportioned composition is especially handsome and thematically appropriate stone carving, which incorporates Beaux-Arts ornamental motifs, classical symbols,and naturalistic elements. The architects were De-Lemos & Cordes; responsible for some of New York's largest and most impressive retail stores, as well as residential and commercial buildings, in conjunction with the Ecole des Beaux-Arts trained Rudolph L. Daus (as successor), one of Brooklyn's foremost architects who designed several public institutional buildings in that borough.

The bank occupies a prominent corner site at the axis of two major thoroughfares. Paired with its counterpart, the New York Bank for Savings located across 14th Street, the two banks form a striking, classical ensemble reflective of sensitive, civic-minded urbanism, symbolically linking the neighborhoods of Greenwich Village and Chelsea.